Have you ever used UITableViewController? Have you ever used UIViewController and UITableView? What are the differences between these two solutions? What are good practice for them?
This note is a quick compare about UITableViewController and UIViewController + UITableView.
I will call the UIViewController + UITableView is Free TableView

UITableViewController

UITableViewController is a special UIViewController. Its view is a UITableView, can’t change constraints. You can’t add view into UITableView, without a cell.

Advantages

• Automatically move contentOffset to the current active text field.
• Good practice for chat log screen, form screen.
• Accept static table view: very easy and fast to design form with Storyboard

Disadvantages

• Can’t display state view by adding to view. You can do that by adding to tableHeaderView or tableFooterView, but you have to handle much things.

• Can’t inherit from BaseController. You have a BaseController with many setting inside, such as, stateView, loadData, setupUI, etc… and you can’t inherit that with UITableViewController.

• Can't add sticked top or bottom view like below

Free TableView

Free TableView is a UIViewController and add a UITableView into the view. You can easily set constraints for UITableView.

Advantages

• Very flexible. You can show/hide the tableView, set padding for tableView.
• Good for state display. In the demo, I show an empty state is a green UIView, at the center of the screen.

Disadvantages

• Not accept static table view.
• Not automatically move contentOffset to the current active text field.

Fix disadvantages

This is a trick. I write in detail later:

• Add UITableView, with datasource is a array of UITableCell.
• Add a library to handle textfield activated. I suggest Håkon Bogen's lib (download at Github).

Explain for demo

I have a demo for this. Download here.

• knController is UIViewController. I made my own controller to manage building UI by code.
• knCustomTableController is Free TableView
• Some functions like horizontal:toView:space, fill:toView:space are my Auto Layout Libs, name knContrainsts.
• Empty state in demo is just a green UIView. I don’t want to add more code to make it more complicated.

Conclusion

• Free TableView has disadvantages but can be solved easily. This solution is much more flexible and easier to manage.
• UITableViewController still has good practice which can’t replace by Free TableView
• Understand the differences can help us choose the right one for our situation.

Enjoy coding.